David Duchovny with wife Tea Leoni: He can't wait to join her in Los Angeles. Reuter Photo

X-Files stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. Reuter Photo

Now we know why The X-Files star David Duchovny really wants to pack up and move to Los Angeles -- it's not for love, it's our wet weather that's driving him south.

Duchovny, who plays Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Fox Mulder on the spooky TV series, let it all slip on NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien -- he came down on Vancouver like a hard West Coast rain.

The conversation ambled into rumors of an X-Files relocation from Vancouver -- where the popular series has been shot since 1993 -- to Los Angeles.

Despite reports that Duchovny is pushing for the relocation so he can be closer to his new wife, sitcom star Tea Leoni, the turncoat revealed his true motives.

"Vancouver is a very nice place if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day," said Duchovny to host O'Brien.

"It is kind of like a tropical rain forest without the tropics. More like an Ice Age rain forest."

This in the wake of a recent interview published on mr.showbiz, a U.S. entertainment industry web page, where Duchovny said he can't work in Vancouver after this year for reasons closer to the heart.

"It's not an option for me," he's quoted as saying. "I'm married and my wife lives in Los Angeles and I'm not going to work out of town after this year.

"If they continue to shoot The X-Files in Vancouver, I can't be in it. If they shoot in L.A., I can."

The TV star -- making the talk-show rounds to push his new movie, a crime drama called Playing God -- claimed he had nothing against Vancouver.

"It's too bad if people think, 'David wants to move the show out of Vancouver because he's tired of the rain,'" said Duchovny, living off and on in Kitsilano during his years with the X-Files. "Of course, I'm tired of the rain. But if I wasn't married to a woman that lived in L.A. I'd stay in Vancouver. It's a lovely city."

Lovely enough to slag off to a North American audience.

The Vancouver attack did not end with Duchovny's mean-spirited banter. American civil rights activist Al Sharpton pulled up a cushion on Conan's couch and took his own cheap shots at our fair city.

"What the hell is Vancouver?!," exclaimed Sharpton. "No one's ever heard of Vancouver. You can't even have a protest in Vancouver. The only protest you can have in Vancouver is people protesting to get out of Vancouver."

This bizarre outburst was followed by a skit featuring one Jacques MacDonald, a fictitious Vancouver city councillor.

"All Vancouver has is hills and mountains and the harbor and other than that it sucks," bellowed the character. "So they should move the show."

Shows like The X-Files were worth about $239.6 million to the B.C. economy last year -- part of a productions package that includes TV movies and feature films expected to be worth $636-million this year.

But an NBC publicist with the Conan O'Brien show insists the Vancouver put-down was all in good fun.

"They were making fun of the fact that he was going to be leaving Vancouver to be closer to his girlfriend, er wife, Tea Leoni," said Joanna Giddon yesterday, from New York City.

"No, we haven't had any (negative) response to the show."

Whether it be for the love of a woman (who happens to tape her sitcom The Naked Truth in L.A.) or because he's sick of being soggy, David Duchovny wants the Fox TV show to move next summer.

Chris Carter, co-executive producer of The X-Files, said in a recent interview that there have been "preliminary discussions" about the show leaving Vancouver for a warmer -- and yes, Dave, drier -- home in L.A..